This might be the real (and silly) reason there’s no Windows 9

Microsoft surprised everyone earlier this week when it announced the name of its next major Windows release, as the company decided to simply skip Windows 9, the name everyone expected to see, and jump directly to Windows 10. The company didn’t really explain that decision, but a Windows developer revealed on Reddit a simple, silly, reason why there’s no Windows 9 – and no, it’s not “because 7 8 9,” no matter what you read on Twitter.

It appears that many Windows app developers have in their apps a line of code that checks for the Windows version the user is running, and that code uses a “Windows 9” shortcut to detect whether the computer is on Windows 95 or Windows 98. Apparently, those developers never imagined that Microsoft could release a different Windows 9 version in the future, and that particular shortcut might cause enough problems for Microsoft to simply skip a beat.

While this may be one explanation for the reason Microsoft skipped Windows 9 and instead chose Windows 10 as its next desktop OS name, the company isn’t willing to confirm or deny it.

“Windows 10 carries Windows forward into a new way of doing things. It is not an incremental change, but a new Windows that will empower the next billion users,” the company told Gizmodo, in response to this particular Windows 10 naming theory.